French PM François Bayrou on the brink in crucial vote

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• 00:00

  Hello and welcome to World Business Report from the BBC World Service.

• 00:04

  I'm Roger Hearing and on this edition,

• 00:06

  France's Prime Minister tells MPs excessive debt is life-threatening for his country as his government is poised to collapse over austerity plans.

• 00:15

  So what does the French business community think?

• 00:18

  For business it's not so good, especially for small companies.

• 00:21

  So I'm a bit afraid that we will have another period without a government.

• 00:26

  Also today a slightly glum Munich car show as European automakers face growing challenges.

• 00:33

  And can AI make movies faster and better and cheaper?

• 00:38

  But let's start with France, which is in a bit of a mess.

• 00:42

  In the next few hours,

• 00:43

  it's widely assumed the man who's been Prime Minister for the last nine months will be out of a job.

• 00:48

  François Bagrou,

• 00:49

  a 74-year-old political veteran put in place by President Emmanuel Macron to find a way out of a years-long crisis,

• 00:56

  is instead... about to be consumed by it,

• 00:59

  when he almost certainly loses a vote of confidence in the country's parliament.

• 01:03

  The eurozone's second biggest economy is mired in debt, 114% of its annual economic output.

• 01:11

  And the Prime Minister has introduced an austerity budget aimed to slash government spending by 44 billion euros.

• 01:19

  But he doesn't have the votes to get it through.

• 01:21

  Monsieur Beirut has been addressing the members of parliament in the past hour,

• 01:25

  and he appealed for them to back his moves to improve his country's financial standing.

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